weekend fun

even though we are a house of sickness, i am going to try to get something crafty done this weekend. i have so many things on my plate. countless baby gifts to get together. i know four couples having babies!!! its a good thing i found an excellent 1970s sewing book with patterns at the goodwill for 89 cents. so there is that. then some friends and i are planning a surprise room makeover for beth who is stomping about ireland, england and scotland for two months. there will be painting, sewing and general redecorating involved, how fun! lets see, my friend tara has put in a request for a new zippered makeup bag. and at the bottom of the list, a little something for myself. im not sure what it will be. i bought an amy bulter pattern to make myself an uptown handbag, which will require a trip to the fabric store...gee whiz, what a shame...

here is a little video fun in the meantime.

babies should not get sick

eliot is feeling better. thank you for the well wishes, but sadly collette has caught a cold. the poor little thing is all stuffed up, and hoarse from all the mouth breathing she has to do. so, so sad. i love you baby, feel better!

just for fun!

i love being able to post pictures on my blog, it makes me so happy! a few months ago i won an box full of vintage sewing patterns on ebay. ebay you are so wonderful... i havent had time to do anything with them yet, but i rummaged through and took some pictures of some of my favorites. and guess what??? now i can share! take a looksie...

i really love this coat/dress combo, and the mint green isnt a bad idea either.



this is my favorite out of the bunch.



this picture is a little blurry. these dresses look similar to the first pattern. i really like the first dress on the left, i think it would be great for summer.



speaking of summer, who doesnt need a fun floral tank and jackie-o haircut??

it is time for a revelation...

so i have recently admitted to myself that indeed i am female. of course that line begs explanation, and here i am to provide it. pretty much all of my life i have been a tomboy, one of the guys, out doorsy, whatever you want to call it. i grew up exploring the creek, looking for frogs and bugs, shooting bb guns, riding bikes, building forts, and a most excellent tree swing. all the typical small town things. my parents live on nine acres of prime land, we had railroad tracks, bridges, tunnels and even abandoned spooky buildings to tromp around in. it was great, i loved every minute of it. ok, well maybe not all the weed pulling and garden work, but i can appreciate it now. my love of the outdoors and digging in the dirt carried through to college where i decided to study archaeology. i some how managed to land a job in my field right out of college and straight away started doing field work. it was great! i had a pretty good bunch of guys to work with, you know me, just one of the guys, they were fun and we all got along fabulously. i could sling fart jokes with the best of them. but then something happened, david and i had eliot. what? i am a mom? well, its a good thing i had a boy! eliot and i could dig in the dirt together by golly! but wait, something else happened. a few years later, i had a girl... hold the phone. girls are an entirely different story. it is nearly impossible to buy something NOT pink for a baby girl. but come to think of it, pink really isnt that bad. what??? thats right, you read correctly. i just said pink isnt that bad. and so, the truth is seeping out. its getting worse... i like to...MAKE things. i even got a sewing machine for christmas, and whats worse? i LOVE fabric. what is happening to me??? get this, i find myself drooling over shoes and pretty skirts. this is a whole new experience for me. i dont really know what to do, how to act. oh, old tomboy hannah is still in there. i will always be a fan of bathroom humor. you just cant beat a good fart joke. and yes, i still do fieldwork. so here is the deal. i get to be the girliest, crafting-est girl i can be right here, on my blog and in the secrecy of my basement, but lets just keep it between us. if the guys i work with caught wind of this... i would be done for. i think i am safe for now, they are too manly to use the internet, and they wouldnt be caught DEAD reading a craft blog, thats for damn sure. i think i have come to peace with the new girly me, and i think she can co-exist with the old me. here is a photo that embodies little ol' tomboy hannah, just one of the guys... god bless her.

and if you cant tell, thats me bottom left....

my poor baby

is sick. poor little eliot. it started out with a cough friday day, and turned into the croup friday night. he lost his voice on saturday and coughed all weekend, so much that he couldnt sleep and was exhausted, and sometime last night it turned into the flu, runny nose and infections in both ears. the little guy... i feel so bad for him. there is nothing worse than a sick baby. he is so sad and miserable, laying on the couch, clutching his stuffed puppy dog and blanket, coughing up half a lung. eliot i hope you feel better soon! hopefully some of the million medications we forced you to take today will do the trick! until then, i will picture you young and happy...

picture test

so my kind friend jeremy has given me some space on his server for my measly pictures. how wonderful! oh, and i am supposed to say how studly he is. soooo studly. i thought i would test it out with a picture from last summer, its one of my all time favorites. i am ready for summer days at the park...

one other small thing

that makes me happy... these....oh how i want them! in purple and orange! is it wrong that there are many things i would like to have out of the pbteen catolog? what does that say about me and age group targeted marketing? young at heart?

take a bite out of crime

well, mcgruff was right, crime doesnt pay. you know what else doesnt pay? procrastination... yikes. i should totally be working on my papersource projects for paper wedding this week. i did about three hours of work last night and i have another twelve to finish for saturday. what is paper wedding you might ask? here is my little plug, we are transforming the entire store into a wedding. there will be demos, favors, ideas, food, music, and of course all kinds of cool ways to use paper. it is going to be pretty spectacular. i will take a bunch of pictures and post them on shutterfly. btw, picture hosting is at the top of my list once i finish my sponsibilities, that and cat.



speaking of pictures, a major contributor to my procrastination was the time spent uploading pictures to shutterfly. i have emerged from my fog as a direct result of the chubbiness that is collettes cheeks. i have the lucky pleasure of munching on them all evening, but for you my friends, pictures will have to suffice (except for kerry, she gets in as much cheek time as possible). here is the link, enjoy! im off to projects and cooking...

down in the dumps...

is what i am... i think its a combination of factors. i havent been getting much sleep lately. i have a bunch of projects to get done for both jobs that i am dragging my feet on. collette has decided to start waking up multiple times a night again after months of sleeping through. david is on the edge with his work and projects. sometimes it just all seems like too much. after paper wedding this weekend at the store, i hope to get back to my own crafty pursuits. i have to get together my trade for cat.


On a brighter note, i got to spend monday at home with eliot and collette. it was a great day. eliot and i made sugar cookies for valentines day. we spent some time at the park and even saw a big fire truck, which was the cherry on top for eliot.

i couldnt do it....

i thought i could sit down at the computer and not to some crafty surfing/posting. but i guess i cant. i got hooked on two new blogs today. the first is cats which i am really excited about. i love the way she writes, it makes me think. and her art is amazing. i am also very excited because she wants to do a trade with me. personally i think she got the short end of the stick, but that doesnt mean im not willing!! the second blog that i am liking very much is myras. she just started it, but i have seen her posting around the town. very cute stuff there... my list of favorites keeps growing and growing. two hours ago i was going to go down to the basement to finish up sarahs ipod case and look at me. still at the computer. must stop.

on kids, music and batteries

we had what i like to call a music night at home this evening. basically all that means is that david or i put in a cd and turn it up and the three of us all jam. do people jam anymore? does that make me a dork that i said jam? oh well. tonight it was keane, a great british pop band. the lead singer has stunning vocals, it makes me love him. david got out the guitar, so of course eliot went running to the play room to get his little guitar. they did some strumming and collette and i worked on vocals. silly, huh? we used to play a lot more music around the house, but i think being busy with two babies has made us forget fun, simple things like that. well no longer i say! eliot has an affinity for bjork, which pleases david to no end. he particularly likes a triumph of the heart, which is a wonderful song. it is fun to see a three year old shake it to techno beats. i forget how musical eliot is. well, the dang kid has a guitar, a mini drum set complete with cymbals (thanks grandma...) and now a keyboard that he got for his birthday from his aunt. he is digging the keyboard right now. it has a microphone, and his favorite song right now is what we call "the hot song". very simple actually, he likes an uncluttered sound. basically it entails him turning on the keyboard, punching the techno beat preset, shaking his booty for a few minutes. this followed by turning off the beat, picking up the mic and saying "haw-T, haw-T" with a hard t sound. very hip. tonight i decided to finally change the batteries in another one of his toys. its the only way we parents truly wield power. he has this rocket shape sorter thingy that plays music and spins around and all this other junk. the batteries were going out on it, which i was pleased about, hoping to push through the tortured sputnik phase of gurgling electronic sounds to the sweet silence of defeat. but tonight i felt guilty and got out some new batteries. i flip the thing over and its one of those battery casings that open with a coin. what is the deal with those things? first of all, the stubby finger with the spinning coin illustration doesnt really do much for me. i pretty much just skip right over it and look to see if it takes a flathead or phillips screwdriver. but the sight of that extra wide opening just fills me with a vaguely confused anger. who are these people that dont have screw drivers? do they use coins for other household chores? do they prefer the thickness and heft of a nickel over the extra gripping power of the quarter? do they ever, ever use a dime for anything? tonight it happened that the only coin i found on the top of the microwave was a penny. i was dubious as to its effectiveness. i thought it much too thin for the job, but was surprised that it did indeed open the battery casing by fitting itself in the slot at about a 15 degree angle. seriously, would it have killed the manufacturer to make a thinner slot for a flathead screwdriver? i just dont get it...

blogging advice

now that i have a few regular readers (thank you kerry, leslie and giao!) i wanted to ask your opinion about a few things. first though i feel like i should apologize for not posting lately. david has been writing like a fiend in the evenings and tying up the computer. it is a good thing though as he has a few production companies interested... we shall see. who knows leslie, maybe we will be moving to so-cal soon!!

so back to my blogging questions. i guess it all boils down to i have been thinking about making a move to typepad, mainly because of picture capabilities. i would like to think that it also has to do with the fact that i would like to design my own site, but i am much further away from that goal that i care to admit to myself. i havent had any problem with blogger, and in theory everything would be great if i could just get all my ftp issues worked out. i actually have a domain i bought before collette was born, in hopes of keeping track of baby pictures for family there. www.huffmania.org not much there right now, just an index page a friend designed. what is so frustrating is that if i could get my ftp access to work, then i could host my pictures there instead of at flicker and keep this blog instead of moving. granted im tempted to move to typepad anyway because it seems to be the "hipper" place to be. im so frustrated. now that i feel comfortable in my blog, i want it to have more of my personality, or be able to post pictures of my projects or the fun things i get in the mail, like the beautiful collage postcard from hope that came the other day. i feel like i have all the pieces of a puzzle that i can seem to get together to make the correct picture. can you tell eliot got a bunch of puzzles for his birthday? anyway, any advice you ladies or anyone else for that matter, might have on this is more than welcome.

malfunction

for some reason, the link to the robot party album is missing... lets try this again!

evolution of a superhero

for eliots birthday i decided to use my newly acquired sewing machine to craft him a super hero cape. this idea came to me after repeated incidents of wet hands and no kitchen towel to be seen. where was it you might ask? tied around eliots neck, oh excuse me, super eliots neck. sometimes superheros get snippy. so it was finally completed after a few hours of labor, and presented to him on his birthday last saturday. it was a big hit (thank goodness)! for your viewing pleasure, i have created an album on shutterfly.

robot party

ok, so things have finally slowed down and i had a chance to upload pictures to shutterfly from eliot's birthday party! here is a link, enjoy! coming soon....evolution of a superhero....